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An anonymous reader writes with a link to The Huffington Post, which reports "that a Saudi man was sentenced to 2,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for dancing naked on the roof of a car and posting the video online, according to multiple reports. Three other men were also sentenced to three to seven years in jail and hundreds of lashes each for the incident, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Arabic-language paper Al-Sharq. The four men were hit with a number of charges, including "encouraging vice" and violating public morality, according to the report. The prosecutor in the case, which was heard by a judge in Saudi Arabia's conservative Al-Qassem province, reportedly objected to the sentences for being "too lenient," Gulf News notes. The video was reportedly circulated widely on the Internet, but could not be found by The Huffington Post."

I get that they have oil, but come on already. This sort of crap should simply not be tolerated by the west. We should not sell them arms or have diplomatic relations with these kinds of states. They abuse women, have a cave man's idea of a criminal justice system, are a theocracy and fund terrorism. What else do they need to do before we decide to stop tolerating their shit?

This is why the UAE is trying to kick-start a world-leading financial industry. Their plan is to throw oil money into getting it started, so once the oil money runs out they'll have a new service industry ready to take over.

If developed, we have enough of our own resources to ignore them until they starve. We really don't need their oil as much as we need for locals to stop opposing all development because their crystal's auras tell them to.

We might have a ways to go before women and men are on equal footing in America, but we're light-years ahead of Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, a woman can't drive a car. She can't vote. She can't even go outside without a male relative tagging along to "supervise" her. This last one strikes me as closer to how you'd treat a pet (sans leash) or a child than an adult human being. In America, a woman might not get the same salary a man does - and that should definitely be fixed - but she can drive to work without any male relative after voting in any election she wants to and nobody thinks that's out of the ordinary.

As far as abuse goes, yes women get abused by private individuals but the justice system for the most part punishes those people. No, it's not perfect and abusers sometimes go unpunished, but a woman reporting abuse in Saudi Arabia would likely get punished for being a "troublesome female" instead of the abuser being punished.

Oh for fucks sake please stop engaging in such false equivalencies. I know you appended the smiley in an effort to make a joke of this, and this isn't aimed at you personally. Far too many people really think it isn't that bad, and we shouldn't say anything because we're not perfect either, and your post (meant in jest or not) feeds into that notion.

The United States may have put an inexperienced African-American in office ahead of a vastly more qualified female, but our gender (and other issues) are miniscule compared to how women are treated in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other places.

* Women are routinely murdered for stepping out of line, in despicable, dishonorable acts referred to by their perpetrators as "honor killings."* Women who offend the sensibilities of the men of their family are often locked up for life in a room with no light, no sound, and no outside contact beyond a tray of food being shoved under a door, a practice that makes solitary confinement in the US and other western states look like a picnic in comparison. The result is almost universal madness on the part of the victim, usually within a relatively short time. This practice is so common and entrenched that there is a term for this facility, the "woman's room" (not to be confused with a restroom or loo)* victims of rape are routinely charged and convicted of fornication, adultery, etc. for having the audacity of being a victim, and imprisoned or worse (see above). Worse, they are convicted merely on the word of a few men, while female testimony is dismissed (by law) and not considered as a counterweight. In many places, they are stoned to death.* Even women who manage to escape all of this and are considered "upstanding" by the psychotic standards of the culture can, at best, expect to be buried in the desert with no record of their passing (no marker, no death record, nothing). This after a life in servitude and bondage.* Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to leave the house without the company of a man, even if the man is a boy-child.* Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive, on pain of severe punushment.

and the list goes on. Women drowned in front of their entire families in the family swimming pool. Women disfigured by acid for refusing the advances of a suiter, and so on and so on, ad nauseum.

People should read the book "Princess" [amazon.com] by Jean Sasson, about the nightmare of being a Saudi Princess, arguably the most privileged and sheltered position a woman can occupy in that society. There are also several excellent, Iranian-made movies that depict, describe, and criticize the epidemic of female-stonings in that society, often with little or no evidence beyond the word of a husband keen to ditch his wife for a prettier woman, e.g. The Stoning of Soraya M [wikipedia.org].

It's appalling, and we in the west have betrayed everything we purport to stand for, year after year and decade after decade, by cozying up to such regimes and abusive societies.

That Saudi Arabia in particular and islam in general (and christianity for that matter) have a huge problem with both men and women expressing their human animal nature.

It's almost as if they don't realize or accept the most basic of truths; that we are animals, born naked, due to the instinct-driven activities of naked animals. Religion, on these issues, is a psychological problem, with a strong denial of reality aspect.

The US funds them to have its bases there. The fifth fleet, for example, is headquartered in Bahrain of all places and would be kicked out the instant the oppressive regime was overturned. Smile and be happy while it lasts.

Just the other day there was a story about the US having more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia, and somebody commented that the EU still needs Saudi oil, so I responded that perhaps the EU should deal with their own problems then.

The groupthink mods on Slashdot still think the Marshall Plan is in effect. They ought to talk to the ghost of Charles de Gaulle about that.

The problem is thus:Almost every state sells arms or has diplomatic relations with every other state. Women are abused everywhere, almost everywhere there's a cave man's idea of a criminal justice system in place, many people are deeply religious, and many support one form of violence or another. What else do we need to do before we decide to stop tolerating our shit?

I get that they have oil, but come on already. This sort of crap should simply not be tolerated by the west. We should not sell them arms or have diplomatic relations with these kinds of states. They abuse women, have a cave man's idea of a criminal justice system, are a theocracy and fund terrorism. What else do they need to do before we decide to stop tolerating their shit?

Why the fuck is up to us to do something about it? Saudi can take care of it's own shit, and make it's own laws. They want to be stupid, let them.

This is where your suggested approach fails; if we have no relations with them and we isolate "barbarians" they will most likely only come to reject us and never learn any better. Like the odd kid in the school, if everyone shuns him there's a higher chance he'll become a bitter, resentful loner.

Ok. Look at it from this angle. In a theocracy, power is derived from some form of divine mandate, interpreted by the priestly class. The citizen has no recourse against any law or action, by definition.

Yes, I am arguing that theocracies aren't inherently a bad idea, primarily because of the fact they aren't inherently a bad idea.

Including the context of the post I was responding to in this discussion, it is the responsibility of the person arguing against a "theocracy" to define it in a meaningful way and thereafter use it consistently.

Since he/she didn't, I'll give you the opportunity again here--what do you mean by "theocracy", specifically? Again, if we are talking about all religions, are you suggest

I don't know that we're so much better. Try that stunt in the US and you'll probably get arrested for indecent exposure or some other type of lewd conduct. That arrest will prevent you from working in certain professions for life, and many other decent jobs, too. Also, you'll have to register as a sex offender for life, which means you can only live in certain places, hardly get any job, be on the receiving end of vigilante "justice".

We say that we don't allow cruel punishment here, and I get that whipping

But whatever politicians may have been saying, AFAICT, we didn't, in fact, get any sweetheart deals on oil from Iraq. Perhaps we kept Hussein from cutting us off, but I don't see any evidence he was going to do that.

That was stated only to appease those who rightfully said a war would cost too much. Any idiot knows, after the Gulf War "War for Oil", it would have been politically disastrous to take oil from Iraq in payment.

In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD.

I know wikipedia makes a lousy citation [wikipedia.org], but you can go from there.

In case you don't understand why this would make sense, and can't be troubled to click the link:

Most oil sales throughout the world are denominated in United States dollars (USD). According to proponents of the petrodollar warfare hypothesis, because most countries rely on oil imports, they are forced to maintain large stockpiles of dollars in order to continue imports. This creates a consistent demand for USDs and puts upward pressure on the USD's value, regardless of economic conditions in the United States. This in turn allegedly allows the US government to gain revenues through seignorage and by issuing bonds at lower interest rates than they otherwise would be able to. As a result the U.S. government can run higher budget deficits at a more sustainable level than can most other countries.

Saddam had threatened to sell the Iraqi oil for Euros instead of U.S. Dollars. I thought everybody knew this already. It would set a precedent that U.S. Dollars are only needed for buying American products.

The US spent the 80s arming Saddam for his war with Iran, and he borrowed money from Kuwait to finance his war. When it was over, Kuwait refused to discharge the debt. They also refused to raise prices and cut oil supply, both of which would have helped Iraq pay off its war debt. Saddam bitched the US, and the US said "deal with it yourself," after spending over a decade and a half helping him out. Saddam felt betrayed by the US, and invaded Kuwait to show them a thing or two about his ability to wage a war. The US has had a history going back decades of getting involved with Middle Eastern politics, and its bit them in the ass on more than a few occasions. Shah of Iran, anyone?

United States support for Iraq during the Iran - Iraq War, against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-U.S. origin weaponry, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and direct involvement in warfare against Iran.

Support from the U.S. for Iraq was not a secret and was frequently discussed in open session of the Senate and House of Representatives. On June 9, 1992, Ted Koppel reported on ABC's Nigh

Have you any idea how much it costs to wage war? Do you know who gets those profits? Dick Cheney is always a big winner but the list is nearly all members of GW's friends. It does not matter about the oil, just keep dropping those bombs and those making the decisions will continue to get richer while the plebs die or go bankrupt trying to pay for their healthcare.

"We" means the people of the U.S. not the individual who was in a position of high authority for a decade. Conveniently, in that time span, we also invaded their biggest regional political rival for reasons that were clearly bogus.

Now one doesn't need to necessarily level conspiracy theories here, but I feel no need to give a benefit of the doubt when it comes to that particular individual.

Yes, growing what George Washington grew is now highly illegal. Except in the two states where it is now legal. And other states where self-medication with said herb is legal. But in the rest you get more punishment than rapists and murderers. Oh, please won't we think of the children?!

No, the real issue is moralizers enforcing their twisted sense morality with violence. That's the only reason dancing naked is illegal in Saudi Arabia, and the only reason Cannabis is prohibited in the US. The two laws are exactly analogous.

Interesting that you brought that up. While I'm very much against the "justice" system in Saudi Arabia, the case of that guy was blown out of proportion. According to this site [callingchristians.com] he is/was a drug addict (I wonder what inspired him to do drugs), and he never was a scholar.

In any case, if he is found guilty he should receive the death sentence in an Islamic criminal justice system. As for this case, I'm not familiar with it, but what I do know is that prison sentences are rather rare in Islamic criminal justice

No, they're not, under international law. There is no way to justify Sharia law with human rights other than by abandoning the concept of human rights altogether.

In fact, most Islamic countries try to do exactly this because they don't have a legal construct by which human rights can be acknowledged. Under Sharia, humans don't have rights, god has rights, humans only have responsibilities to god.

In the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, one has the right to obey god without question or hesitation. Here, "rights" are derived from divine law, and though there is lip service paid to the freedom of religion, every country that has adopted it has interpreted it as intended, that is, that everyone has the right to obey the Koran, the hadith, and the sunnah.

The problem with this moral relativism argument is that it supposes that there are no objective standards to measure any sort of oppression, and that if one finds a culture willing to hide away its women, enforce religious practice on all people, and murder people for petty crimes, then that is just fine "for them".

Under international law, these are not culturally relative rights, and if they were, they wouldn't be rights. The authors of the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights aren't merely recon

Fortunately, international human rights laws are not required satisfy such pedantry. The laws apply despite cultural relativist arguments that they shouldn't.

As to whether morals themselves are relative, that's a parlour game, and has no bearing on international law. Biological research has consistently demonstrated that a lot of our supposed morality does, in fact, precede and work independently of the "moral traditions" various religions have tried to usurp. The holy books of the three Abrahamaic relig

Along with many other Midwesterners, Finkle-McGraw put in a few weeks building levees out of sandbags and plastic sheeting. Once again he was struck by the national media coverage—reporters from the coasts kept showing up and announcing, with some bewilderment, that there had been no looting.... Finkle-McGraw began to develop an opinion that was to shape his political views in later years, namely, that while people were not genetically different, they were culturally as different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others. This was not a subjective value judgment, merely an observation that some cultures thrived and expanded while others failed. It was a view implicitly shared by nearly everyone but, in those days, never voiced.

Oh come on. Is it Muslims that are suing the Kansas Board of Schools for teaching evolution in classes ? Is it Muslims that enacted abortion laws that require medical rape with a sonar to make women feel more guilty for doing it ?

You've got enough brain-dead biggots in your country to make it as bad any backwards theocracy.

Eh, it's still an extreme comparison. This is a person who is having their life ruined, suffering literal torture, and all for the sake of one interpretation of one book.

I don't think Christianity is an accurate understanding of the universe, and I don't think it's even close to an ideal approach to morality, but comparing people who are afraid of learning something to those who torture and imprison others on the basis of their religion isn't fair.

I think it's entirely fair. The only difference between these two groups is the book they've chosen. It took a lot of work and loss of life to chill the Christians down to a point where they are almost tolerable, but they have everything they need to become (again) what the Muslims are today.

I think it's entirely fair. The only difference between these two groups is the book they've chosen.

Nope, the difference, as can be seen throughout the world, is poverty. Cultures with a lot of poverty take an extreme approach to enforcing morality. Christians still execute gay people in Uganda. Turkey is a mostly Muslim country without these kinds of extreme civil rights abuses.

It took a lot of work and loss of life to chill the Christians down to a point where they are almost tolerable, but they have everything they need to become (again) what the Muslims are today.

I'm sorry, I hate bible-thumpers as much as anyone, but that's taking it way too far. If you think the U.S. has ANYTHING like the religious oppression you will find in Saudi Arabia, then you obviously haven't been there. Give me a call when the U.S. has an official, government-sanctioned bible-thumper police force that cuts peoples hands off for stealing, or beats women for leaving their houses. Call me when the U.S. bans all non-Christian places of worship, or starts beheading people for adultery.

> Yes, there are hate crimes... but usually someone caught doing a "fag bash" will get a 10+ year> sentence just due to the pressure put on the judge and DA by the press and other groups.

But of course, part of that is because violent crime isn't generally all that punishable itself without "hate crimes". We had a prosecutor arguing to extend hate crimes legislation to homeless people.

Why? Because a homeless man was beat within an inch of his life by two guys for kicks, and because there was nothing stolen, no home to invade, and no defined hate crime, they were out in a couple of months...for coming just short of murder.

Seemed to me at the time the problem was not that homeless people need a special designation but that violent crime is poorly differentiated and there are gaping holes in the law that they are now trying to fix....with duct tape.

[1]: The main reason the US's murder rate is so high is the availability of firearms.

Switzerland has just as many guns and far less murders. Mexico has less and far more murders.

Realistically the US's murder rate is heavily influenced by many cultural factors and has a lot to do with gang and drug related violence. When you take those out the US isn't all that different. Plus while actual murders are higher in the US if you look at other violent crime (rape, muggings, etc) the US is ahead of many European countries.

Overall this issue is far more complex than the simple minded "Guns are bad, mmmkay." response.

What's really abhorrent was a Muslim preacher in Saudi Arabia (there being not one of another kind allowed) got 5 years and 600 lashes for beating his 5 year old daughter to death because he claimed she was "defiling" herself with sex.

"Al-Ghamdi's daughter, Lama, was admitted to King Saud Hospital in Riyadh in March 2012 after suffering extensive injuries, including broken ribs, a crushed skull, bruising and burns. Family, activists and officials say she died of her wounds in late October last year.

Several activists and numerous local media had reported that Lama was also raped, but her mother denied that happened. Ali said that Lama's father was concerned about the virginity of his 5-year-old daughter.

"The father confessed to the abuse, the beating and torturing Lama in the most obnoxious manners," she said last February. One thing she said he did was to burn Lama's rectum.

"These are not some unfounded accusations, but everything is based on the medical examination by the hospital and the team of physicians who treated Lama when she was first admitted," she said." (http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/07/world/meast/saudi-arabia-girl-death/index.html)

8 years...600 lashes for beating a young girl to death because Allah made him do it. This Allah guy, WTF? Sharia Law is Bullshit.

What you refer to is leader worship and/or state worship. Usually some sort of Fascism though often with the label Socialism. These can indeed be as ugly as any religion, but they are very much like religion. Such totalitarian states have claimed Atheism simply as a way to shut down competing religions. i.e., worship Stalin/Mao/etc., not God.

No, Atheists do not believe that there is a God. Or, to be more precise still, they do not find any convincing evidence that there is a God, any more than there is convincing evidence of pink unicorns. Their default state of belief for the infinity of possible assertions that are unsupported by sound evidence is "lack", not "faith". They don't have faith that there is no God -- that would require positive evidence of a negative statement, as they say in the inference business, lack of evidence is not positive evidence of lack. Humans in the West had little evidence that black swans existed (and hence didn't much believe in them) until they did and then they did. Black swans existed just fine without humans having "faith" that they did, and people who didn't believe in them when nobody they knew or heard of had ever seen one didn't have "faith" that they did NOT exist, they just had no reason to think that they did.

Atheists do have to spend a fair bit of time shooting holes in the mish-mosh of hearsay from the dark ages that passes for conclusive evidence in the minds of the religious, just like good scientists have to spend a fair bit of time shooting holes in weak evidence from poorly done studies in many other contexts. Scientists don't "have faith that the magnetic monopole doesn't exist" just because nobody has (yet) credibly seen one, any more than they had faith that the Higgs boson didn't exist before someone allegedly saw a few at the LHC. They just weren't convinced by the evidence and arguments so far that they do exist.

So actually, many Atheists are both rational and faithless and are neither ignorant nor idiots. Since they would consider the word "agnostic" to mean "lacking knowledge of" (because that's what it means, and their not idiots or ignorant) they could probably care less if you called them "agnostic about God", except for the weak connotation of agnostic that suggests that the proposition involved is somehow reasonable. I'm agnostic about monopoles because I find them reasonable, but don't believe in them (yet) due to a lack of evidence. I'm not exactly agnostic about pink unicorns that love to lay their heads in the laps of virgins and can cure disease with their horns -- yes, there's a lack of evidence but the proposition isn't particularly reasonable -- it is inconsistent with a lot of things I believe more strongly because there is a lot of evidence.

An atheist might well not consider themselves to be an agnostic because they think that at the very least, most descriptions of God are horribly inconsistent, often logically contradictory, sometimes ethically contradictory, and arguments about evidence concerning God are an excellent opportunity to play "Logical Fallacy Bingo". So they often, but not always, are not the sort of thing one can properly be said to feel "agnostic" about. But at the end of the day, show me a pink unicorn healing virgin amputees with a touch of its horn, and after I've taken a dose or two of anti-psychotic medication (just in case somebody slipped me some LSD in my coffee) I will reluctantly increase my degree of belief in them.

In the meantime, perhaps you might avoid making sweeping, incorrect statements about atheism, which is lack of belief in god, not active belief that no god exists, and certainly does not involve faith in any of the many reasonable meanings of the word.

What you describe is sociopathy, not "extreme atheism". It is not the case that Russia or China were disproportionately populated by atheists. Sociopaths don't all share the same existentialist beliefs any more than neurotypicals do, but what they do share is a lack of ethics. Atheists do not share lesser ethics than theists.

That's one of the problems, yeah. They weren't convicted of crimes necessarily violating Islam, the crimes are state crimes. "Encouraging vice" is a crime that gives the state a lot of leeway in defining "vice". So does "violating public morality". It happens that in this case they look to Islam to define their public morality, but any time you have a state where simply violating public morality is a crime then you open the system up to a lot of abuse and disproportionate or unequal sentences.

Really? Because I remember a story where a women caught in the act of adultery was brought to Jesus and He basically said "Don't judge her, you have no right. Then asked her to stop doing it." Very little murder was involved.
Reference:
http://biblehub.com/nlt/john/8.htm [biblehub.com]

Book: Acts. Chapter 5. Ananias converted to Christianity and was told to sell all his posessions and give all the money to the commune. Instead, he gave only half the money, and kept the other half.

A priest asked him about this, and he lied and said "I gave all the money." In punishment, God instantly killed him then and there. The same thing happened to his wife shortly thereafter.

What happened to all the forgiveness and compassion?

This is a major problem with the Bible: it presents a very inconsistent image of God. Sometimes he is over-the-top forgiving, and other times he is over-the-top brutal in punishment. There is a distinct lack of consistency, leaving his followers to wonder when their best efforts at pleasing Him will just make Him go irate again.

"Mysterious ways" does not capture it. "Sociopathic ways" is more accurate. I really, really hope the Bible is not accurate in its description of God.

The core difference here is that God is the one doing the killing. Jesus basically said, "I'll take care of the sinners, you just try to live your own life well." Not that any Christians read and follow the bible, but still...

I thought Christians believed that Jesus *is* God? Unless God has a serious case of multiple personality disorder, the Bible is definitely a very confusing text. The only reason Christians accept the inconsistencies is because they were raised with interpreters (ministers, priests, etc.) who cobbled it all together into some coherent message. To an outsider, it's just a goddamn mess.

There are three "Gods": God, the Father; His Son, Jesus Christ; and the Holy Ghost. The first two have bodies, the last one does not. The Bible is fairly plain about this. For instance, when Christ was baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, He was in the river while the Father spoke from the heavens and the Holy Ghost appeared such that people described Him "like a dove." See. Three separate beings. They act with a single purpose like how a husband and wife should.

No. Very smart people have spent 1000+ years thinking through every detail of the bible. Before the Enlightenment, it's what geeks did in western culture.

If you read through all that stuff, you'll find quite logical and rational explanations for almost everything. There's a very important lesson there - just because you can come up with a rational explanation for a belief doesn't make it true.

GOD: Arthur! Arthur, King of the Britons! Oh, don't grovel! If
there's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling.
ARTHUR: Sorry--
GOD: And don't apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it's
"sorry this" and "forgive me that" and "I'm not worthy". What are you
doing now!?
ARTHUR: I'm averting my eyes, oh Lord.
GOD: Well, don't. It's like those miserable Psalms-- they're so
depressing. Now knock it off!

Well, or else Peter and his cronies knew he was holding back, so they grabbed him and tortured him until he coughed up the dough and then killed him, then later his wife came in so they killed her too, and then they carried the bodies out and piously said "Look what GOD does to people that hold out on us when they join up". That actually explains all of the supposed facts (assuming that "Luke" got them right in the first place) and hey, it doesn't require anything supernatural!

To put it another way, if you pulled that stunt today: Two people walk into a house where you and some burly young associates are sitting, and a short while later you carry out two dead bodies and explain to the crowd how all of the money that was in their pockets (a substantial sum, since they supposedly sold everything) is really your money -- I mean "God's" money, but you just happen to be his treasurer -- and God struck the two people down because they changed their mind about giving it all over, do you really think that any jury in the world would buy the "God did it" defense? Of course not. Because, in fact, we've never seen anybody ever get struck down by God, not even when they did things like fill entire warehouse sized buildings with men, women, children and bars of fake soap and then filled the buildings with cyanide and burned the bodies, or kidnapped, raped, killed, and ate children, or enslaved entire populations. In fact, we have really good evidence that you can commit any sin you want and while humans may not like it, not one single thing will happen to you because of God not liking it.

That's the reason Christians invented the whole "heaven/hell" thing. Since there is very, very visibly no such thing as cosmic justice in our real lives in the real world, they needed an entire infinite posthumous existence where one could be rewarded or punished to be able to argue that a just God exists at all.

If God truly disliked hypocrites, would one single member of congress be out there not yet struck dead, or blinded, or maimed, or enslaved or raped or tortured (because God loves slavery -- it says so right there in the Bible, just like God approves of marriage by rape plus 50 shekels)? I don't think so. If God punished religious liars, would all of the members of the Catholic priesthood who raped small boys and went on to live their entire lives receiving the communion -- often enough from the very hands of those that were aware of their crimes -- and doing other religious stuff not have had their equipment blasted off by a lightning bolt the first time they reached for an innocent? How is it that so many Christians simultaneously oppose abortion and favor the death penalty and support the idea of a just war without being swallowed up by a pit? I don't think you can assert that God opposes hypocrisy at all. God, after all, is a hypocrite, ten times over, according to the many, many contradictions in the infallible bible.

And Zeus lives in Olympus, Odin in Valhalla (when he's not wandering amongst us), Horus is in the sky (at least we can see His presence) and Russell's teapot is in orbit. We have as much evidence for each of these as we do for Yahweh, Jehovah, Jesus etc. Why do you believe in the version of God you do? Is it just a matter of needing to believe in something and that Christianity is 'good enough'?

You are correct, I cannot disprove the existence of your god. Or of Lugh, Coyote or Quetzalcoatl. You do believe i

Not necessarily. From my understanding, in Islamic law, the lashes are not administered all at once. They are spread out over a period of time. Those 2000 lashes could be over the 10 year period of his sentence.

Also, "lash" is not a precise term. I thought I remember reading that under Islamic law, there are certain guidelines that the person administering the lashes must follow to make sure the victim doesn't die. I forget what they are, though. Something like holding a copy of the Quran between his elbow